Well, not really, only by the academic calendar could someone call early May summer. The term is over, commencement (at which I shall walk) is next week, and we are now on “summer hours,” which is nice.
You may note that “referencius victorious” sounds nothing like “haphazard jottings.” It was with a heavy heart that I read an informal poll of people I knew on Facebook telling me that “haphazard jottings” in fact had a rather unpleasant, unprofessional sound to it and that I should change it up. While “Referencius Victorious” is not an actual phrase, nor is “referencius” an actual word, it seemed a bit more related in its own way to who I am and what I’m doing here, so faretheewell, “Haphazard Jottings,” you make more sense in relation to Twitter anyway.
I follow a fair number of librarian or related blogs (some of which I found myself, some were from the Academic Libraries bundle at Hack Lib School’s LIS Blogs to Follow). Google Reader has become a regular stop on the internet wandering I do more or less daily, one I can feel is a more positive use of my time than, say, Gawker. This past week, the Reader has produced a couple of interesting posts about royal diaries and Google’s transparency on copyright challenges.
Via No Shelf Required, Queen Victoria’s Journals have gone live and are available for browsing from the Royal Archives and Bodleian Libraries of Oxford. First of all, this is a link that will go on my Abecedary of Reference Sites (not yet live) because it is way cool, but it is also personally relevant because it’s similar to the project I just completed and recently mentioned, “Brooklyn Diary, 1864.” Of course, my ancestor’s diary is a much, much (MUCH) smaller endeavor, but it’s nice proof that keeping a diary is an activity that unites people of various classes and countries and provides useful information for future generations.
BeSpacific links to Google’s recently released Transparency Report. As part of Title II of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, an “information location tool” such as Google can be petitioned by copyright holders or “reporting organizations” to remove search result links to websites they deem an infringement of their property. Google’s report shows about 95% of their requests, and reveals that they fulfill 97% of the requests they receive, many within about 10 hours (FAQ; the report also covers government requests, discussed here). The biggest requester, as copyright holder and via a reporting organization, is Microsoft, whose requests are about 1 million of the 1.275m requests of the past month. The most requested removals are for torrent sites.
As I learned in Jessica Litman’s Digital Copyright (2001) (which I read for a paper on authorship, submitted earlier this evening for the Libri student award!), the scary thing about the DMCA is Google’s speedy removal time. They do admit to not completing every request when they get it, especially if the request is obviously “inaccurate or intentionally abusive” (FAQ), but they only notify the subject of the removal request “[w]hen feasible and legal to do so … to give them an opportunity to submit a counter-notice in response to copyright removal requests (FAQ).” What does this mean? How in those 10 hours do they figure out what is and is not “feasible?” Torrent sites are fairly clear targets for these requests but what if the torrent is for something completely legitimate, like some users of the busted MegaUpload? Google is happier to remove the material and deal with the issue later rather than spend the time to get it right. I use Google products a lot (the Reader, for one), but I’m starting to get more and more wigged out about stuff like this…
A presentation I did for Online Database Searching and Services (a name I hear is changing, maybe?) on how to search Twitter gained more than 500 views the first week it was up, and thought it has not kept up that pace, now at two weeks out it’s up in the 630s, which is nice. If you make it (simple, clear, and useful), they will come. The final project for that class was to help a patron with a research need, and my patron/friend needed help with a math issue. I am now more familiar with two math databases I had never used before, MathSciNet (handy free tools here) and Zentrallblatt MATH.
I’ve been working on a website for Digital Humanities, the digitized diary of a Brooklyn-dwelling ancestor, over at brooklyndiary1864.wordpress.com. The HTML is a slog but WordPress makes it fairly easy to noodle around, and I think it’ll look really nice when it’s done, which will be by May 7. Well, “done” in a relative sense, digital humanities projects are never really finished, it seems.
And finally, I recently turned in a paper for Information Policy on copyright and authorship, and have a final short presentation to do for Wed, which will be on Disney and copyright. Copyright has become a big interest of mine this semester, building on the spark of intrigue from a class I audited at the GC, “The Meaning of Media” with David Greetham, who perhaps coincidentally is a contributor in one of the textbooks in Digital Humanities. Or perhaps not coincidentally, as the nodes of connection there are me and book/media studies.
This summer, I’ll be continuing my work as a GA at Pratt’s Brooklyn campus library, and also working as a GA for Dr. Lopatovska, with whom I took Online DB Searching and will be taking Research Methods in the fall. I’ll be helping her with the project around which the Research Methods class will be focused, so I’m really looking forward to being so deeply involved.
Just had my wisdom teeth out! Awesome! Being awake for it actually made it the complete opposite of awesome, but whatever, it’s over now, but I am getting sick of broth I can tell you what.
In other news, the thesis is slowly starting to come together, and again I am seeing overlap between my Media class and the library classes, specifically in terms of copyright and IP law, which was the subject of this week’s Media class as well as an area my Information Professions teacher said she wished she and more librarians knew more about. I agree! It is tricky, tricky business. In the Media class we read the 2003 Supreme Court decision Eldred et al v. Ashcroft, Atty Genl and the dissents by Justice Breyer and Stevens (as well as the court opinion by Ginsburg which I might have just skimmed). This was the case known colloquially as the Mickey Mouse case, as it was based on a Congressional act extending copyright by 20 years longer than was previously established, ie from the date of creation to 50, now 70, years after the death of the creator. Mickey Mouse, under the previous extension in 1976, would have gone into public domain in 2004, which Disney was violently loathe to see happen. Congress, inspired by the death of Sonny Bono, who wanted copyrights to last “forever,” and the streams of contributions from major media companies, in 1998 extended the lives of copyrights that had already been extended in the 1976 act extending the term to creation until 50 years after the death of the creator. But can they do that? Lawrence Lessig, constitutional scholar and interesting guy, wrote about Eric Eldred and his own involvement in the case, which ended unhappily for those wishing to see more access to information in the public domain. Lessig and other opponents argued that this series of extensions violated the constitutional language:
Congress shall have the Power to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
[U.S. Const., art. I, § 8, cl. 8, via IT Law Wiki, emphasis mine]
The idea of “limited times” was that eventually all new information would become public to inspire and contribute to progress. One thing the founders were rebelling against was the environment of economic monopolies in Britain. Perpetual copyright was to be specifically prevented by the language, and Congress, in extending it again, seemed to be going against this. The other issue at play here is the First Amendment and free speech- extending the copyrights could be seen as violating First Amendment rights. Lessig figured the Supreme Court of the late 1990s/early 2000s would be receptive to checking Congress’s power, as Chief Justice Rehnquist had proved open to doing so in earlier decisions. But as it turned out, the Justices didn’t see it that way. They didn’t address the Congressional limits at all, instead noting that a) the limit of +20 years was a limit, and that b) whether or not Congress had made a mistake was not at issue here, just whether the additional years did actually equal a perpetual copyright. The dissenters disagreed with both of these arguments (both are worth reading, they make different but equally important points). Lessig well describes his mistakes in arguing the case, and how else it might have ended.
But that’s where copyright law stands now, at least in terms of terms. It is almost long enough to truly be unlimited. And Disney of course is paramount in rigorously enforcing their rights to charge everyone for anything involving their characters, which is especially ironic given their history of using fairy tales IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN (ie published before Jan 1 1923) so they didn’t have to pay for them, and then copyrighting their additions to the story! Cinderella the story can’t be copyrighted, but “bibbidi-bobbodi-boo,” the talking mice, and the score definitely can (discussed on the Web4Lib mailing list here). The issue then is that of “derivative works,” whether or not copyrighting Disney’s Cinderella is derivative of an earlier work and therefore uncopyrightable. As Cinderella was in the public domain, Disney’s version is not, technically, a derivative work. But still, it is sketchy beyond belief to take full advantage of the PD and then refuse to let others do the same. Besides, as Lessig points out in his book on the PD (via Creative Commons) Free Culture, Mickey Mouse’s first appearance onscreen was a direct, blatant ripoff of a Buster Keaton short. Hm… how quickly they forget.
Disney’s Pinocchio: this is educational, I swear!
Shrek’s Pinocchio: creepy.
A more traditional Pinocchio, also creepy, bc it’s a creepy story.
Who’s in the PD? Tarzan, Pinocchio, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Cinderella, Aladdin, King Arthur… the list goes on (here, for example, about halfway down the page). Pinocchio is PD but Disney’s image of him is not, so Shrek’s version must therefore be a little different, and is now copyrighted itself. PD = cheap source of material from which to make billions of dollars, and then prevent others from using on pretty much anything that can’t claim to be “fair use,” ie parody, educational, commentary, criticism, or library archiving.
referencius victorious 